Mamdani quietly funnels another $6.2M in taxpayer dollars to office slammed as ‘propaganda arm’

Mayor Zohran Mamdani quietly earmarked another $6.2 million for his “mass engagement” office that critics claim is merely a taxpayer-funded political propaganda arm for City Hall.

Hizzoner snuck in an additional $1.1 million in undefined spending for the Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement in his mid-year budget modification released Thursday.

That brings the total budget for the activist-packed outreach office to a whopping $6.3 million for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, the newly released documents show.

The socialist mayor’s pet project originally had an approved $5.2 million budget for expenses, not including salaries for staffers, many of whom are far-left activists.

The updated budget documents also added another $1.7 million to the office’s piggy bank for each of the three following years, for a total $6.2 million in extra spending.

City Councilman Phil Wong, an outspoken critic of the mayor’s mass engagement arm, slammed the additional funding, saying he “doesn’t believe the office warrants any more tax dollars.”

“We truly don’t understand what it is they even do other than politicking,” the Queens Democrat fumed.

The office partnered with pro-rent-freeze activists to urge New Yorkers to attend Rent Guidelines Board meetings ahead of the body approving a rent freeze for stabilized apartments — one of Mamdani’s top campaign promises — even while claiming it was not pushing a political agenda.

The OME also worked to get voters out to the polls during the June primaries as part of a campaign that raised concerns about whether it crossed an ethical line by subtly pushing people to back left-wing House candidates endorsed by Mamdani.

The Post previously reported that OME planned to dole out cushy, six-figure salaries — totaling nearly $2 million in taxpayer cash — to more than a dozen activist-minded hires.

But a detailed salary breakdown for the office — which is run by longtime organizer and Democratic Socialists of America member Tascha Van Auken — hasn’t been publicly released, with payroll being tucked into City Hall’s internal books.

A previous review of job listings by The Post found the Mamdani administration was adding at least $155 million in wages alone, excluding benefits, to City Hall’s books.

The mayor’s office added around $2 million in pay for additional staffers in the mid-year budget update.

The revamped financial plan showed the city’s overall spending ballooning by more than $3 billion from the $126 billion budget deal adopted with the City Council in June.

The new, nearly $130 billion budget was slammed by fiscal hawks who decried City Hall’s failure to curb spending.

“While some spending like SNAP administration is needed, the plan amazingly baselines $1 billion in new annual spending, five times the new savings,” said Andrew Rein, of the Citizens Budget Commission think tank.

“That busts the budget, it doesn’t balance it.”

City Hall did not return requests for comment.